At the corporate level, Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed on a search and advertising partnership, potentially raising their joint search share to 25 percent of the market. What users will notice, however, is Yahoo switching to Bing's search engine.

If you're a frequent web searcher concerned with Google's overwhelming hold on the market, this could be considered intriguingly helpful news. Bing's gained a foothold as an up-and-comer, at least among Lifehacker readers, and has won plaudits for its eyeball friendliness, rapid feature deployment, and, well, a lot of people like those big home page pictures. Microsoft and Bing hold about 8.4 percent of the search market, according to last month's ComScore research numbers, while Yahoo claimed 19.6 percent. Google continued to dominate with around 65 percent of search traffic.

A usability research firm, the Catalyst Group, performed one of those amazingly geeky (and neat)…
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On the other hand, if you're an advocate for web anonymity, or you happen to work in the U.S. Department of Justice's anti-trust division, you'll likely be keeping an eye out to see what happens. Bing and Yahoo trading search and advertising targeting information might not sit right with many web wanderers, and, in some ways, it decreases the value of Yahoo as a alternative to Google's data monopoly.

What's your take on the new link between Sunnyvale, CA and Redmond, WA? Could a stronger second-place competitor push Google into more innovation, or does such a move only seal up the search market even tighter? Tell us your take in the comments.